Identity
by Demented Inu
Summary: Spoilers for volume 22. When the core of your being vanishes, what are you left with? Yuki/Kyo preslash.


**Warning: Spoilers for volume 22.**

The Sohma estate.

Huge, cavernous, intricate and traditional; just as he'd pictured it being. It had been so long since he'd stepped foot inside. He'd expected to feel afraid, intimidated, maybe even a little overwhelmed. But he couldn't summon the energy. Honestly, all he felt was emptiness. Perhaps a kind of nostalgia. He reached up and touched one of the wind chimes hanging from the ceiling.

"Kyo."

He closed his eyes and felt the sound of that voice run its cool fingertips over him. Familiarity. But he didn't want to have to turn around, have to look at the vacant, pained expression he himself had been wearing these last few weeks.

"How does it feel, Kyo?" Yuki asked softly, voice wavering. "Is it worth it?"

Kyo lowered his hand and glanced over the wrist, studying it. Naked. A pale stripe where the beads used to be, before he'd torn them off and watched them scatter over the concrete. Was it really so easy?

"It's weird," Kyo replied truthfully, turning to face Yuki. "Kind of… pointless, you know? Like… I'll never need to come here again. I only came because I wanted to know if I could. Well, you know what they say, right? Curiosity killed the ca—"

Cut short. He wasn't the Cat anymore. Nobody would ever have to bear that again, never have to change again, never have to don that bracelet ever again. It should've been a happy thought. But why was he so sad?

"I thought you weren't speaking to me anymore," Kyo said instead, tone hurt. Yuki toed the ground and didn't look up.

"I just wanted…" He drifted a moment as though unsure of what to say after so long. "I don't know, Kyo. It's just… hard, I guess."

"It happened to you too, didn't it?"

Yuki only nodded. The moonlight played on the grey hair, adding to its angelic features, emphasizing how darkly pretty Yuki was. "Shigure too. And Haru… and Ritsu… my brother. Everyone. It's finally over." A soft laugh fell from him. "I should be happy, right? It's over. I can hold Machi without being afraid of rejection, I can _hold_ her, I can be fully _human_ now. But… somehow… Somehow, it's just so lonely."

He looked at Kyo now. Their eyes met, but Kyo didn't feel the need to look away for once. He understood perfectly, remembered the exact feeling of the curse breaking within him as he clung to Tohru. Like an anchor breaking away to send him adrift, the weight holding him in place lifting suddenly. It was scary. Nerve-wracking. If he wasn't the Cat, then who was he?

"I just wanted to see you," Yuki finished his previous statement. His face was sad, more alone than Kyo had ever seen.

Kyo felt more than heard the desperation in Yuki's voice. "You're being strange. You never want to see me. Why aren't you screaming at me? Calling me an idiot?"

Yuki's eyes softened. The look that Tohru had back when she'd first told Kyo she loved him.

"What's the point anymore?" Yuki asked. "The curse is broken. We're not… we're not family anymore. There's no need to fight."

No longer the Cat and Rat. No longer the zodiac. Their long-ago promise to God was kept and God had rewarded them for it. Now they were just two boys. Kyo and Yuki, two incredibly strong boys, enemies looking upon each other as though meeting for the first time.

It was only natural, then, to let Yuki bring him into an embrace. To respond to it with only the barest traces of hesitance. The feel of their bodies pressed close made Kyo think that this must be what he'd been waiting for: something out-of-reach, something forbidden by Akito, by God. Not Tohru, although he did love her more than he loved himself by now. No, it was this. This holding on to someone feeling, this familiar weight, this…

Wholeness.

This feeling of knowing who he was, and knowing exactly where he was supposed to be.

The Sohma estate. Large and vacant and older than time itself. He hadn't come here out of spite or nostalgia or curiosity. He'd come to find out who he was.

"It's just so goddamn _lonely_."


End file.
